bold move to turbocharge Ethereum performance, Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist has introduced EIP-9698, a proposal to increase Ethereum gas limit by 100-fold over four years.
If approved, this would boost the network transaction capacity to an estimated 2,000 transactions per second (TPS), positioning Ethereum as a direct competitor to high-speed chains like Solana.
Starting June 2025, the gas limit would rise gradually from 36 million to 3.6 billion a phased approach with two 10x increments over two years each. This strategy aims to give node operators sufficient time to upgrade infrastructure and mitigate risks like network congestion and block propagation delays.
The proposal follows Ethereum recent February 2025 gas limit increase and arrives amid growing concerns that a Layer-2-heavy roadmap could fragment the ecosystem. Critics warn that higher gas limits could strain decentralisation and node performance.
If successful, EIP-9698 could mark a major milestone in Ethereum evolution, significantly enhancing scalability without abandoning its core Layer-1 architecture. Still, achieving these ambitions will demand careful technical execution and community consensus.
Ethereum next era may be on the horizon but the path forward won’t be without challenges.
